


Architecture and Mortality

by julietophelia



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Additional Weirdness, F/M, Fourth Wall, Gargoyle King as metaphor for bad writing, Godhead Jones, Gryphons and Gargoyles, Meta, Riverdale Weirdness, the existential despair of a Sexy Lamp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 01:37:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17111996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julietophelia/pseuds/julietophelia
Summary: "Don't you ever feel like there's some force controlling us? Pushing us towards certain people."Jughead's voice is level and calm, but his eyes are too intense, his gestures exaggerated. He looks completely unhinged, to be honest.Toni tilts her head at him. "You mean love?"Jughead and Toni peek behind the curtain, and the boy who loved making up stories becomes the ultimate narrator.





	Architecture and Mortality

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this makes at least as much sense as a typical episode of Riverdale. AU after 3x05.

"Don't you ever feel like there's some force controlling us? Pushing us towards certain people."

Jughead's voice is level and calm, but his eyes are too intense, his gestures exaggerated. He looks completely unhinged, to be honest.

Toni tilts her head at him. "You mean love?"

"No, different. Maybe you really like someone but you never even talk to them. Or you fight with someone, and the next day it's like nothing happened. You don't understand why you're doing what you're doing, or why you feel what you're feeling."

"That all just sounds like being a teenager, Jug," she tells him, as gently as she can.

He deflates, slouches back in his chair. "You don't get it. I thought when you started playing, out of everyone, maybe you would get it."

He looks so miserable. She wants to comfort him, but she doesn’t know how. 

"I'm sorry," she says, putting a hand over his on the table.

"No, don't be." He smiles weakly. "Thank you for listening to me, Lady Topaz. No one else let me get this far."

 

…

 

She's so lucky to have Cheryl. 

They cuddle up together on a chair in the student lounge, limbs entwined, and for a moment she wants to ask her, _Why do you love me?_ or maybe, _Why do I love you?_ What ridiculous questions. There's no reason for love.

"What did we do this summer?" she asks instead.

Cheryl squints at her. "We went on our iconic road trip."

"We did?"

"It was amazing."

"Where did we go?"

"We… we went to California."

"How long did it take to get there? What did we do?"

The bell rings and Cheryl stands up abruptly, jostling her. She blows her a kiss.

"Ta-ta, Tee-Tee. See you tonight for our next quest."

Her iconic, amazing, sensational girlfriend strolls out of the lounge, vibrant curls bouncing with every step. Toni sighs dreamily.

She doesn't know what she'd do without her.

 

…

 

Jughead tells them they're ready to take the game off board. It means he gets to play again, the Hellcaster, not just sit behind the board and narrate. 

They make costumes. She feels ridiculous in a long dress and velvet cape. Cheryl wears a red leather getup she already had for practicing archery. Playing Deadeye isn't much of a change for her. She's always been larger than life. Fangs proudly shows off a helmet shaped like a lion's head he made himself. Surely they all have better things to do, but it feels like they all live for the game.

As the Sorceress, she's powerful, valued. Her team depends on her to heal them when they take a hit, to light their way in the darkness, to help them battle monsters. There's never been a damn thing she could do against their enemies in life.

She pairs up with Jughead for a quest, because they're the same class. Their task is to find and decode the scrolls that will prove the Red Paladin's innocence, so he can return to Eldervair.

They carry the divining rod between them, each holding one side of the forked maple branch. Its subtle fluctuations take them to the edge of the quarry, where they find a small mound of freshly turned dirt with a statuette of the Gryphon Queen perched on top. 

They dig it up with their hands and unearth a small wooden chest. She picks the lock while Jughead stands and brushes his hands on his jeans. Three neat scrolls of parchment lay inside, runes written in shiny red ink covering each one.

"This will take hours to decode."

"Better get started then."

"Were you leading us the whole time? Since you're the game master," she thinks to ask while they walk back to the trailer.

"Of course not. It wouldn’t have been a quest if I knew where it was."

"Did you ask Sweet Pea and Fangs to hide the chest for us?" 

"No."

"Then how did it get there?"

He shakes his head. "You're asking the wrong question. Why was it there? Evidence underground in a quarry. What does it mean?"

"Well, what does it mean?"

"I have no idea."

She watches his back as he starts to outpace her with his annoyingly long legs, and breaks into a jog to keep up.

They sit on the floor of the trailer, the scripture spread out before her, a notepad on Jughead's lap as he scribbles down the translation. The scripture is disorganized, and there's no index, forcing her to flip through the pages searching for the meaning behind each rune. She lingers for a second on a quest page: _The Sorceress Rescues Her Love._

_A wicked Queen has locked away her beautiful daughter in a tower guarded by zealots._

She turns the page. No runes here. Jughead yawns, rolls his neck, and gets up for another cup of coffee. She feels half asleep herself. She glances at Jughead's notepad. The translation looks like gibberish, random strings of letters.

"Jug, this doesn't make any sense."

"I know. I'm guessing it's a secondary code. Anagrams, maybe."

"Great." Her head hits the side of the couch as she looks up at the ceiling.

She holds up the damned scroll, and with the light filtering through the parchment she sees the traces of black ink, ghosts of letters that have been scraped away.

"You want to call it a night?" he asks, sitting down next to her.

"No, Jug, I've got it. We've been translating the wrong writing. See? The confession is right here, in plain English. The runes were just there to cover it up."

He leans in to study the writing. 

"I'll be damned."

"We did it! Finally, we solved it."

"You solved it. Thank you, Sorceress."

She feels the warmth of his leg against hers and the steam rising off the mug of coffee. Their faces are very close together. His thumb brushes her cheek, just for a second. She pulls away, scrambling and falling back onto her heels.

"Are you okay?"

"I should be asking you that."

"What are you talking about?"

"You remember this is a game, right? Maybe in the book the Sorceress and the Hellcaster have an affair, but not us."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to," he trails off.

"It's okay. It's this stupid game, messes with our heads. I'm just gonna go, okay?"

She picks up her things and hurries out the door.

 

…

 

She sleeps in a tent now, with a sleeping bag and a little air mattress on the ground. It doesn't bother her. This is far from the worst place she's had to sleep. Her uncle used to lock her out, so she's used to being homeless. At least she gets her own tent.

Her uncle is gone now. She doesn't know for sure what happened to him, and she doesn't really care. He never cared about her. He must have gotten arrested on riot night, or run away after the rumble with the Ghoulies. Maybe he died.

No, her uncle's been gone longer than that. She took Cheryl in for a while, after breaking her out of the Sisters, and he never would have allowed that. He went on a bender. That's it. He went on a bender one night and never came back. Probably OD'd on Jingle-Jangle.

The moment before she drifts off to sleep, she tries to picture her mother's face.

 

…

 

She finds Jughead in the bunker, headphones on, working on their next quest. He doesn't notice her come in. She feels like she's floating. She feels like, if she wanted to, she could just walk up the walls. 

She lifts his chin with a finger and kisses him to get his attention.

"The game isn't changing us," she says. "It just gives us permission to break the rules."

"More than permission."

"It lets us see how all of this works. We can take back control of our lives."

He grins. "You see it now. God, I felt so alone."

He kisses her eagerly. She kisses him back. None of this is real. They can do anything.

Later, she snuggles closer to him on a cot in a dead boy's bunker, which might be ghoulish, but she's always had an affinity for the darker side of things. Besides, it hasn't stopped everyone else.

A thought keeps nagging at her, spoiling the high of her revelation.

"What if we think we're breaking the rules, but it's just a part of his game? All quests have obstacles, to create drama, keep things interesting."

"We'll put up a hell of an obstacle, then."

 

…

 

She wakes up from a dream sobbing. She has to talk to Jughead. She has to stop him.

It's still dark when she runs across tent city, barefoot, no jacket. She bangs on the trailer door. He must have already been awake from how quickly he answers. He never got enough sleep, even less now.

"Toni, what's wrong? You must be freezing." He puts his hands on her shoulders, full of concern, and guides her inside.

"We have to stop playing."

"We can't, even if we try. You know that."

"We have to stop our game. We have to stop fighting him." She sobs again.

"Calm down, Toni," he says. "Talk to me."

How absurd, Jughead telling her to calm down. He guides her over to the table and she sits down, tries to breathe. He puts a cup of coffee in front of her. She holds it just to warm her hands, stop them from shaking.

"I had this dream. It showed me the Gargoyle King knows what's best for us," she tells him intently. She sounds like the crazy one now. But she has to make him understand. She can't let him ruin this.

"What? He's made people kill themselves, toyed with all of us for our whole lives."

"He makes me quiet and small and selfless, like I'm supposed to be. He gave me a purpose. Everything that's happened this last year, to all of us, I don't have to feel any of it. I don't need anything. I don't want anything. I'm in love. I'm happy."

"What about free will? If we let him control us, we're not really human. Don't you want to know who you really are?"

"What if I don't like who I really am? What if no one does?"

"I'll like you."

"You don't know that. I could be some kind of double-crossing siren."

"You're the Sorceress, not the Siren."

"This isn't a joke, Jones. I could hurt you."

He takes one of her hands in his. "Do you want to hurt me?"

"I don't know. You can be really annoying sometimes."

A smile spreads across his face, and she laughs, the tension and panic bubbling out of her. 

He slides out of his chair and kneels in front of her.

"I know you, Toni. You're a great person, and he didn't make you that way. He never could have made you up."

"In my dream, everyone hated me. They wanted me to die."

"Oh, Toni."

"I don't remember what it was like before I met you," she confesses.

He laughs softly. "It hasn't been that long."

"I mean it. I can't remember."

His face turns serious, impossibly sad. He strokes her hair.

"You will, when all of this is over. You'll take your life back. You deserve so much more, Toni." His hands cup her face. "Stay here tonight. My dad's out."

"Out where?"

"I have my suspicions. Nothing nefarious, don't worry about it. God, you're still cold."

"Warm me up."

She tries to think of stories from her grandfather, fights with her uncle, anything she grab onto.

She remembers trying to outlaw the Serpent dance. She remembers the men laughing at her, telling her to be quiet, except for FP. FP let her talk and called a vote, and she loved him for it, even when she lost anyway and the other men laughed.

When she thinks of the men who laughed at her, they all have the Gargoyle King's blank skull face.

 

…

 

She sits crossed-legged on a cushion in the bunker. Jughead sits across from her. He looks serene, sure of himself. There are no candles lit, no quest for her.

"What did you want to tell me?"

"I have to say goodbye."

She panics, grabs onto his hand. "No, you haven't failed your quest."

"It's not that." He slips out of her grip easily. "I've figured it all out. I know how to defeat him."

"You're going to fight him alone? You should bring us with you, we can bring you back."

"I can't come back. There always has to be a game master, to write our story. Otherwise all of us, this whole world, would cease to exist. But it doesn't have to be a cruel one. They don't have to turn us against each other and make us do horrible things."

"You're going to replace the Gargoyle King?"

"Yes."

"Why you?" 

He smiles wryly, and it makes him look like himself again, just for a moment.

"I feel like I've been preparing for this my whole life. I've always seen myself as an observer. I was even arrogant enough to think I could write the story of this town in a novel."

"Arrogant is right. You always have to be the hero. Our martyr king. If you're such an outsider, why are you always at the center of things?"

"I don’t want to fight, Toni."

"I don't have to do what you want, Jones," she snaps.

"No, you don't. And you won't ever have to. But please. I don't have much time."

A tear falls down her cheek despite her best efforts. "I don't want you to go."

"I'll still be there, in a way, even if you can't see me, or remember me."

She hugs him, feeling him real and alive in her arms. She doesn't understand how she could forget him. His shirt is wet with her tears when she pulls away.

"You'd look after my dad, wouldn't you? Even if I wasn't there to ask?"

"Of course," she says, nodding. "You're really doing this? Now?"

He picks up his phone off the table. "Just have to call Betty first. Had to leave her for last, or she'd try to stop me. She still doesn't understand all of this. She's too rational, my Nancy Drew."

"I'm going to miss you. Even if I don't remember, I'll miss you."

"You are going to have a great life, Toni Topaz. You, Cheryl, Betty, Archie. The whole gang."

As she's climbing the ladder, he calls after her, reading her mind. "Don't try to wait for me up there. When I go through that door, I'll come out somewhere else."

She looks down, sees him standing at the end of the tunnel. "Goodbye," she says, one last time, and climbs out the hatch into a new world.

 

…

 

The concert is all anyone's been talking about for the last month. Josie and the Pussycats and The Archies are performing together for the very first time. Toni waited in line for an hour to get her ticket.

She gets a good spot, fourth row, near the center. Luckily the few people in front of her aren't tall. She notices the drum kit is doubled up, with two seats, back to back. The Blossom twins take their seats in the front row. Cheryl waves to her like the Queen of England. She waves back like a normal person.

When everyone comes out on stage, Jughead comes out with them, and takes his seat beside Melody. Of course he's there. It's not The Archies without Jughead.

She tracks him down after the show and nearly tackles him with a hug.

"Why didn't you tell me you were back?"

He studies his hands like he's surprised by them.

"I'm not, really, it's just a self-insert. Pretty dumb that it took me so long to think of writing myself back in."

She blinks at him. "What? You went to see your grandparents in Toledo."

"Never mind. Yeah, we came back early. I wanted the concert to be a surprise."

"Well, you're back just in time, because I have a big problem and I need your help."

"What is it?"

"I asked Cheryl to the back to school dance, but then Valerie asked me and I said yes like a lovestruck idiot. I'm mean it's Valerie Brown, how could I say no? Now I have two dates and I don't know what to do."

"Just go with both of them and keep running back and forth."

"Are you kidding? That's horrible. It would obviously end in disaster."

"But it could be a funny disaster."

She crosses her arms over her chest. "You enjoy watching me suffer, Jones."

"Of course not. Never." He grins at her, proving her point. "Come on, let's go to Pop's. You know I think better with food."

**Author's Note:**

> I've only seen bits and pieces of season 3, so I apologize for any inconsistencies with the show other than the obvious intentional ones. I tried to read up as much as I could on this evil D&D plot, because it sounds amazing.
> 
> Title is from the comic _Doctor 13: Architecture and Mortality._


End file.
